Banita Jacks has been charged with murder Thursday after police found four decomposing bodies in her Washington, D.C. house. Jacks has been charged with murder for two of the four deaths.
City officials believe the girls are Banita Jacks's daughters, ages 5, 6, 11 and 17. However, due to the conditions of the bodies, the identities of the girls has not yet been determined.
U.S. marshals said Jacks, 33, seemed calm as they knocked on the door of her rowhouse in the Southeast section of Washington yesterday to serve a routine eviction notice. She offered no clue that her daughters' decaying bodies lay upstairs.
According to the Washington Post, the girls appeared to have been dead at least 15 days based on the insects that were found on their bodies.
The girls attended two well-regarded D.C. public charter schools until last March. The older daughter attended Booker T. Washington Public Charter School for Technical Arts and the three younger daughters attended Meridian Public Charter School, both in Northwest Washington.
The girls' father died about a year ago and Jacks withdrew the girls a short time later, saying she planned to home-school them.
Thus far, due to the evidence, it appears that the oldest child may have been stabbed in the abdomen, while the younger three may have been asphyxiated or poisoned.
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